Why We're Creating The 6th Edition -- Please Read Before Posting

[Thia Halmades]

Edit: I'd like to think I'm not just being Chicken Little, and trying to dodge pieces of sky. I'm trying to bring up real concerns.

Diamond Spear posted a news thread some time ago about a mother who'd taken her kids car away because she found alcohol in it. The conversation derailed so badly that were "roleplaying" the kid and the mom, making all KINDS of insane inferences about how she was abusive and the kid would go down in history as being mocked and reviled and so on. And I pointed out, calmly: "How on earth did you cats get to this point when you literally have no information to support anything you're saying?"

And CrosshairCollie responded: "Dude. It's the internet. We don't need facts."

Point being: Chris, take at face value I respect you as an individual and read your posts and value your opinion. We're both Giant Robot Junkies and we share very common interests and from what I've seen and we've discussed, very common playstyles. At the end of the day -- at the end of THIS DAY -- we do not have ANY information that would lead us to believe that the sky is falling. Steve hasn't started writing yet.

Steve hasn't even posted any new RULES yet. He's just brought up things that HE gets questions about. This is The Can of Worms. All those times Steve said "I don't answer design/philosophy questions?" Now I know why. Because he was told to keep HERO a specific way. And now he's had the handcuffs taken off and he can do it "his" way.

I may not like his way. I may freaking HATE his way (for all I loved the Big Book of Beating Ass, it never made its way into a game), but I want more granularity, better vehicle construction rules, and a new book on Giant Robots far more than I want to worry about whether I won't like 6E. So I'm choosing to be optimistic. I think anything else at this point is crying Wolf.

We don't know, but honestly, other than some of my books read like law texts, I love everything I have. I have no reason to believe that I won't at least "really like" 6E, and i'm hoping I love it as much as 5ER.

[Chris Goodwin]

Diamond Spear posted a news thread some time ago about a mother who'd taken her kids car away because she found alcohol in it. The conversation derailed so badly that were "roleplaying" the kid and the mom, making all KINDS of insane inferences about how she was abusive and the kid would go down in history as being mocked and reviled and so on. And I pointed out, calmly: "How on earth did you cats get to this point when you literally have no information to support anything you're saying?"

And CrosshairCollie responded: "Dude. It's the internet. We don't need facts."

Point being: Chris, take at face value I respect you as an individual and read your posts and value your opinion. We're both Giant Robot Junkies and we share very common interests and from what I've seen and we've discussed, very common playstyles. At the end of the day -- at the end of THIS DAY -- we do not have ANY information that would lead us to believe that the sky is falling. Steve hasn't started writing yet.

Steve hasn't even posted any new RULES yet. He's just brought up things that HE gets questions about. This is The Can of Worms. All those times Steve said "I don't answer design/philosophy questions?" Now I know why. Because he was told to keep HERO a specific way. And now he's had the handcuffs taken off and he can do it "his" way.

I may not like his way. I may freaking HATE his way (for all I loved the Big Book of Beating Ass, it never made its way into a game), but I want more granularity, better vehicle construction rules, and a new book on Giant Robots far more than I want to worry about whether I won't like 6E. So I'm choosing to be optimistic. I think anything else at this point is crying Wolf.

We don't know, but honestly, other than some of my books read like law texts, I love everything I have. I have no reason to believe that I won't at least "really like" 6E, and i'm hoping I love it as much as 5ER.

Garrrr. You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours.

Really, I'm going to try to stay reasonable.

[Thia Halmades]

Garrrr. You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours.

Really, I'm going to try to stay reasonable.

That's all I'm asking of anyone. I'm trying to be the voice of reason here. I'm a 6thgnostic. I neither believe that 6th is great, nor do I believe 6th is bad. I think that the concept of me putting in my 0.02 is pretty awesome, and I choose to be upbeat about it because it's gonna happen anyway. May as well enjoy it.

And you can rep me as soon as the cycle comes 'round. We all know Thia loves his rep.

[Akiva]

No, but you end up with new people effectively speaking a different language, and a harder time finding players for your favorite version of the game.

You're going to have that problem anyway. If HERO 6th doesn't come out, the influx of new HERO players will continue to be as it has been. People who get into HERO because of the new edition will get into it to play the new edition. Those players would probably have never been part of some pool of untapped 5ER players that you could tap into; they would've stayed playing whatever game they were playing.

As for 5ER players moving to 6E diminishing that pool of potential players, then, well, yes, that's a valid argument and it's always the one fairly indefensible example of the rifts caused by new editions. It's the one casualty that can't really be assuaged between editions even if the new edition is very similar to the old; there will be differences (in HERO's case, most likely in Character Point levels and costs) enough to make direct play impossible without some kind of conversion.

Like it or not, helping people's investments in books keep their value can be a valid reason for minimizing forward incompatibility.

And I'm sure that Steve wants to achieve as much backward compatibility as he can but a line has to be drawn somewhere. On the other hand, just because one has spent x amount of dollars doesn't guarantee anything. No one is owed anything because they've invested so much. You've bought books, not stock in a company. I don't mean to be dismissive but there was never any guarantee of life expectancy of those books.

As I wrote above, I make money and I budget for game purchases. I expect to buy so much per year and if I'm buying new 6E books rather than new 5E books, it's still the same to my bank account. And, of my 5E books, I'll still get a lot of use out of them.

On the other hand, with all this handwaving about GURPS 4E, I'd like to point out that SJG clearly recognizes this problem and, unlike 3E books, 4E books are more background information rather than rules crunch. Those books will be useful whether you're playing 4E, 3E, or some other game. Now, having written that, I absolutely adore that HERO 5E supplements are as crunchy as the main rulebook. I love how crunchy HERO is all around.

So, I'm not entirely unsympathetic and I agree that HERO 6E shouldn't be a radical redesign but, being a newcomer to the game, and having only read 5ER, I can see where a new edition is very much needed. I have around 30 years of RPG experience, and most of it with heavy games, and HERO is still sometimes confusing, difficult to learn, and incredibly overwhelming.

But, I still maintain that you have two choices with any game system: new editions or the game going out of print.

[Enforcer84]

You're going to have that problem anyway. If HERO 6th doesn't come out, the influx of new HERO players will continue to be as it has been. People who get into HERO because of the new edition will get into it to play the new edition. Those players would probably have never been part of some pool of untapped 5ER players that you could tap into; they would've stayed playing whatever game they were playing.

As for 5ER players moving to 6E diminishing that pool of potential players, then, well, yes, that's a valid argument and it's always the one fairly indefensible example of the rifts caused by new editions. It's the one casualty that can't really be assuaged between editions even if the new edition is very similar to the old; there will be differences (in HERO's case, most likely in Character Point levels and costs) enough to make direct play impossible without some kind of conversion.



And I'm sure that Steve wants to achieve as much backward compatibility as he can but a line has to be drawn somewhere. On the other hand, just because one has spent x amount of dollars doesn't guarantee anything. No one is owed anything because they've invested so much. You've bought books, not stock in a company. I don't mean to be dismissive but there was never any guarantee of life expectancy of those books.

As I wrote above, I make money and I budget for game purchases. I expect to buy so much per year and if I'm buying new 6E books rather than new 5E books, it's still the same to my bank account. And, of my 5E books, I'll still get a lot of use out of them.

On the other hand, with all this handwaving about GURPS 4E, I'd like to point out that SJG clearly recognizes this problem and, unlike 3E books, 4E books are more background information rather than rules crunch. Those books will be useful whether you're playing 4E, 3E, or some other game. Now, having written that, I absolutely adore that HERO 5E supplements are as crunchy as the main rulebook. I love how crunchy HERO is all around.

So, I'm not entirely unsympathetic and I agree that HERO 6E shouldn't be a radical redesign but, being a newcomer to the game, and having only read 5ER, I can see where a new edition is very much needed. I have around 30 years of RPG experience, and most of it with heavy games, and HERO is still sometimes confusing, difficult to learn, and incredibly overwhelming.

But, I still maintain that you have two choices with any game system: new editions or the game going out of print.

True.
And if they go to a new edition and we don't buy all the new books again they might go out of print.

ILike I said above I'll wait until I've seen it before I pass judgement on 6th. I doubt however, that I'll be buying much more.

[Xotl]

Hero is not its rules, but a philosophy: the ability to do anything. There are very few mechanics that, removed, make the game no longer Hero. Now, that having been said, radical change is *not* the same thing as simplification and streamlining. The goal should be for Hero to have the power to do everything it could do in the past, with less time, more intuitiveness, and possibly a lower word count. If that means that some things are removed, renamed, or simplified, then that's fine, as long as it serves the main goal.

Can Hero work the same with a couple of stats trimmmed? Yes. Do we need four attack powers when one will do? No. How about the number of defenses? Obviously not. Does there need to be three different power frameworks? I don't believe so.

Ultimately I want to be able to make the same bat-winged three-headed explosive allergic-to-jello firebreathing hellspawn from Dimension X character in 6th that I could in 5th, only faster and with the need for less reading and writing. Any increase in clarity and reduction in rules is to be applauded. It's only once you've hit the point where I can't do something, or that you make change for the sake of change, that you've gone too far.

[Kirby]

Many fans are likely to ask “Why now for 6E?” or “Is 6E really necessary?”...We have three main reasons for this:

1. We can make the game better.


2. Reason #2 withheld pending the Big Announcement on February 18, 2008.

So has Reason # 2 been announced somewhere? And is there a #3 reason or did Steve miscount?

Reminds me of a Jerry Springer slice where he asks a woman to "give [him] a number between one and three," and she says "Four."

[Enforcer84]

Hero is not its rules, but a philosophy: the ability to do anything. There are very few mechanics that, removed, make the game no longer Hero. Now, that having been said, radical change is *not* the same thing as simplification and streamlining. The goal should be for Hero to have the power to do everything it could do in the past, with less time, more intuitiveness, and possibly a lower word count. If that means that some things are removed, renamed, or simplified, then that's fine, as long as it serves the main goal.

Can Hero work the same with a couple of stats trimmmed? Yes. Do we need four attack powers when one will do? No. How about the number of defenses? Obviously not. Does there need to be three different power frameworks? I don't believe so.

Ultimately I want to be able to make the same bat-winged three-headed explosive allergic-to-jello firebreathing hellspawn from Dimension X character in 6th that I could in 5th, only faster and with the need for less reading and writing. Any increase in clarity and reduction in rules is to be applauded. It's only once you've hit the point where I can't do something, or that you make change for the sake of change, that you've gone too far.

I have to disagree. They did that with Fuzion, it didn't fly...the influx of new blood did not stem the bleeding from the old guard leaving. There might be other factors in the falure of Champions: New Millennium, but that's what it looked like to me. And I bought the new stuff only to convert it to 4th Ed hero. Also, Fuzion had Heroic STR and Superheroic STR...Thia? Take a look at it.

[SAVeira]

I have to disagree. They did that with Fuzion, it didn't fly...the influx of new blood did not stem the bleeding from the old guard leaving. There might be other factors in the falure of Champions: New Millennium, but that's what it looked like to me. And I bought the new stuff only to convert it to 4th Ed hero. Also, Fuzion had Heroic STR and Superheroic STR...Thia? Take a look at it.

I did the same thing. I almost get banned from the AOL Hero Games section at the time, when I stated have much trouble I was having converting from Fuzion to 4th Edition Hero. I enjoyed the setting but hated Fuzion.

[GloryFox]

You have GOT to be kidding me I just sold HERO as a final system to my game buddies. No more buying GURPS books, No more buying d20 etc.... and you pull this out.

SO is this a big translation from 5th to 6th or a little one?

[ghost-angel]

I, for one, remain undyingly optimistic.

If we go in positively we can make positive change, if we go in negatively we will only hurt the process.

To quote Anthrax

"Turn It Up. Bring The Noise."

[Lucius]

In fact, I was. Emailed Steve my questionnaire and everything. I'd like to think I'm the reason Aid is 10 points per die and Healing works the way it does. (Anyone who wants to aim brickbats my way for that can feel free, now.)

Consider yourself beaned with brickbat. (For the Healing. I eventually decided the Aid change was not so bad.)

Hero is not its rules, but a philosophy: the ability to do anything. There are very few mechanics that, removed, make the game no longer Hero. Now, that having been said, radical change is *not* the same thing as simplification and streamlining. The goal should be for Hero to have the power to do everything it could do in the past, with less time, more intuitiveness, and possibly a lower word count. If that means that some things are removed, renamed, or simplified, then that's fine, as long as it serves the main goal.

Agreed

Can Hero work the same with a couple of stats trimmmed? Yes.

Hero could work without COMeliness, but one stat is not “a couple.”

Do we need four attack powers when one will do? No.

I assume you’re suggesting that Energy Blast, Hand to Hand Attack, Hand to Hand Killing Attack, and Ranged Killing Attack, can be folded into one power with the difference between Ranged and Hand to Hand a kind of “toggle” like the difference between Physical and Energy, and the difference between Normal and Killing being a Limitation, Advantage, Adder, or “Addervantage” like Resistant Defenses is?

How about the number of defenses? Obviously not.

Perhaps not.

Does there need to be three different power frameworks? I don't believe so.

I could possibly see eliminating Elemental Control…you could perhaps make it a Limitation, “Grouped Powers,” that means if any power in the group is Drained, etc. then they all are.

But now we’re getting into specifics that should probably go into the appropriate, specific threads.

Lucius Alexander

And an appropriate specific palindromedary

[TSandman]

Because some people have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on books that they don't want to see be made useless.

I don't want to see any more changes made between fifth and sixth than were made between fourth and fifth, or third and fourth.

I can still, with minor tweaks, use materials released for third edition with 5e. If I can't do that with sixth edition, I'm a lot less likely to want to get into it.

Speaking as a newbie that only lately got back on the HERO train, I can say that I've plunked money into those books in the last 3 months:

• 5er
• Sidekick
• Equip. Handbook
• Hero Bestiary
• Pulp Hero
• Star Hero
• Dark Champion
• Fantasy Hero
• Valdorian Age
• Turakian Age
• The Hero Grimoire I
• Monsters Minions and Marauders
• Enchanted Items

What I really wouldn't like would be to have to either dump em' all or ignore all the new stuff...

And I will now have to tell two of my friends that just bought 5er last month...

I WANT to play Hero. We've searched for a system that we like and for once, the "silent majority" of our own gaming group is vocaly behind something. I just hope it'll not be too drastic (à la D&D 4th/NWoD) to be able to use the majority of the stuff we've just bought.

Edit: Not that I'll be on the street for all the books I've bought already, but I like my stuff to be minimally usefull. Oh, and we've yet to play a single game**, but we're working on it

As an aside, having begun reading the Combat section of 5er (just finished reading EVERY powers with their advantages and limitations), one thing that could bring a breath of fresh air could be less dense terminology/accronyms. I mean, some of those sounds like parts of political speech written in the 80's by Politically-Correct-Living-Entities-Inabiting-The-World-Known-As-Earth-Be-It-Of-The-Male-Or-Female_Gender... but don't do a 180 either, I hate it when terminology is randomly re-generated just to "soud kewl!" (ie: nWoD) to the point where we don't know what is what.

** Yes, I'm a completist, I like to have the whole range of stuff, bad habit of mine, I know

[Bygoneyrs]

For me I hate the idea of going to 6e, especially since I DROPPED D&D 3.5e because they went to 4e. depending of what they do, I might just drop Hero's too. I have spent alot of money of 5e and too, what have to buy NEW UPDATED books because they want to add a few new rules to and get everyone to rebuy their books again. Do they think people are going to fall for that, that is what TSR did with D&D.

Penn

[GloryFox]

For me I hate the idea of going to 6e, especially since I DROPPED D&D 3.5e because they went to 4e. depending of what they do, I might just drop Hero's too. I have spent alot of money of 5e and too, what have to buy NEW UPDATED books because they want to add a few new rules to and get everyone to rebuy their books again. Do they think people are going to fall for that, that is what TSR did with D&D.

QFT,

my sell on the HERO system to my group of gamers, is that the HERO system has basically been unchanged since early 1990, and even then many of the core rules were not changed since 1979. Moving from that system to 5th was easy as pie. Moving to 5th ed Revised a big piece of cake. Moving to 6ed just might cause my game group to give up RPG's overall or return to GURPS out of print editions.

First GURPS goes to a new edition and FAILS, D&D to a new edition with anger and frustration from the most devoted fans. My group is very upset about this and refuses even under threat of death to buy anything from WOTC ever again period. HERO was our hope for a stable game system we can evolve into any genre we wanted and the system works well too.

The more I think about it the more I'm getting mad about it. HERO needed very few to no changes. Seems to me that this is a money ploy at best from bad marketing ideology and not understanding the psychology of your market base. Rather than allowing your player base to slowly take advantage of the disenfranchised from the d20 crowd, and grow your market. You are disenfranchising your smaller player base altogether by having them buy more books they already have just like WoTC. Heck even our hard core Traveler GURPS game was going to change over to HERO Traveler. I guess we can kiss that good by too.

As many of you have read by now in our new CHAMPIONS ONLINE MMORPG forum, Cryptic Studios has bought the Champions intellectual property and will release a massive multiplayer online role-playing game based on it in 2009. That gives us access to a whole new customer base that’s never been exposed to our products before, and we want to publish books (primarily Champions books) that will appeal to them.

That’s awesome I’m happy for you guys. I hope you can make some money through this. Keep in mind that a failed MMO can hurt your business as well, and there are many failed MMO’s on the market currently. Yes I know there are many RPG's that have failed too, but HERO survived because it was unique in its design and has remained mostly unchanged since 1979. Please try and keep the changes to an extreme minimum. If you can do this then people will continue to purchase HERO products another 10 years from now. Residual income from a good "stable" product that works is a good thing.

That means reworking the books to attract their interest, such as by using art from the MMO and organizing the material to suit someone whose background is in MMOs rather than true RPGs (but without, I hasten to add, making the books less useful and appealing to our traditional RPG playing fans and customers). As long as we’re going to have to make changes along those lines, it’s the perfect opportunity to also make changes to the rules engine. (Though again, to make things perfectly clear, I am not changing the HERO System to work like an MMO, Cryptic Studios does not own the HERO System rules, and the CHAMPIONS ONLINE MMORPG does not use the HERO System rules for character creation, task or combat resolution, or anything else.) To put it another way, as long as we’ve got the hood open to change the oil we might as well replace the spark plugs if it looks like they need it.

Those spark plugs still have life. As much as I applaud the news and am quite happy for the HERO system getting publicity, ANet’s Guild Wars 2 comes out next year as well and it’s free. Guess what I’ll be playing online and guess what I’ll be playing with pen and paper once a week? That 15$ a month will be going to game books, hopefully HERO 5th ed R. games books, not to Cryptic Studio.

Seems to me you can keep the 5ed R as is, since you won’t be changing to fit Cryptic’s rendition of Champions. Any changes you make should be minor or not at all. I vote for none at all and focus on creating genre books. Then you can spend the summer marketing to disenfranchised d20 fanatics. Tell them your system is stable (and it currently is BTW.)